I refer to the letter Beng Hock's bank account: It's you, MACC, that's broke .

After reading the above sad but true letter regarding the poor state of affairs of our poorer countrymen, I feel compelled to highlight some serious work that needs to be done by our government to lift up the financial position of our struggling countrymen. I'm not going to touch on the Teoh Beng Hock matter to avoid complicating things.

It's really sad to see how so many of us (more than 50% of the population) live with a disposable income of less than RM2,000 per month. There is hardly any cash leftover if you have a family to feed.

No matter how ingeniously you plan your expenses, you are poor at the end of the day. The writer was right to point out the many discarded ATM slips. Pick up all the slips from the bin and hardly anyone has more than RM100 left in their bank accounts.

What else can these people do except to get a second job at the expense of family time or line up at the many gambling outlets or worse, become a snatch thief? Maybe it's wrong to us who are comfortable in life, but to them there's no other way.

Compare ourselves to Singapore. A clean hawker stall's bowl of mee/chicken rice of decent proportions can be had for S$2.50 (no such thing in Malaysia). A bigger bowl/plate for S$3 (here the minimum is RM4 for a normal plate/bowl, RM5.50 for bigger ones).

Hot coffee costs S$0.80 (RM1.20 here), iced at S$1-20 (RM1.50 here). Clean, punctual MRT/ bus rides usually cost less than S$1. The price of these basic necessities show us how the poorer folks in both countries will survive at the end of the day.

The previous Malaysian administrations had failed to uplift our people's quality of life. The present government owes it to the people to correct the imbalances in income distribution, price hikes in basic necessities and the lesser amount of family time - all these result in a poor quality of life.

No wonder many of us see the only hope to get out of this poor state of affairs is through corruption, gambling or cheating.

Lets hope the ‘1Malaysia’ concept includes sincerely helping the poor to overcome their sorry state, and not just politics.

I sincerely hope those extremely rich ministers and politicians spare a thought for the struggling families in our country and pen down some drastic measures to help out.

For once, please forget about checkmating your rivals, forget about those lucrative contracts to be had, forget about how to propel your career even higher. Just come down to earth and give a helping hand, will you?